It doesn't look like Olson is going to make it, that's good. I believe the more they start finding out about the Arkansas project the quicker Junior will want Olson and all of this to disappear.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
By Thomas B. Edsall and Robert G. Kaiser
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, May 11, 2001; Page A01
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) delayed a scheduled vote on President Bush's nomination of Theodore B. Olson as solicitor general yesterday to examine allegations that Olson gave misleading testimony about his role in a conservative magazine's effort to discredit former president Bill Clinton.
"There are legitimate issues," Hatch told the committee as he deferred action. An aide said Hatch would be willing to talk to those whose versions of events differ from Olson's.
Democratic senators said either the staff or the full committee should question others who worked at the American Spectator during the 1990s, when the magazine ran a $2.3 million investigation into the activities of Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton known as the "Arkansas Project." Financed by foundations controlled by conservative billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, the project became a symbol for Clinton loyalists of what they viewed as a concerted effort by the right to undermine the Clintons.
Olson, who was a lawyer for the Spectator and in 1996 joined the magazine's board, told the committee: "I was not involved in the [Arkansas] project in its origin or its management." Later, in written answers to questions, Olson said that he was aware the magazine was publishing investigative articles about the Clintons and that he had social contacts with the editors when articles were discussed, but, "I was not involved in organizing, supervising or managing the conduct of those efforts."
The committee's decision to postpone a vote followed a Washington Post report in which a former Spectator investigative reporter, David Brock, disputed Olson's testimony, saying Olson was at several dinner meetings to plan articles on the Clintons in Arkansas. The article also quoted American Spectator documents indicating that Olson and his law firm were paid out of Arkansas Project funds.
R. Emmett Tyrrell, editor in chief of the Spectator, and David Henderson, the man who ran the Arkansas Project, both said in interviews yesterday that Olson was not personally involved.
Tyrrell and Wladyslaw Pleszczynski, then a top editor, said that project story ideas, legal issues involving the stories produced by the project and other directly related matters were discussed with Olson by staff members, and at dinner parties of Spectator staffers and board members.
Pleszczynski said Brock, who was the leading investigator of the Clintons' activities in Arkansas, "talked to Ted off and on about issues" involved in his stories.
Tyrrell said: "I don't recall any special conversations I had with Ted Olson about stories about the Clintons. I would say it was a possibility, just as it was a possibility that [Franklin] Roosevelt would have discussed Pearl Harbor on December 8 [1941] with his secretary of state."
Douglas Cox, who worked with Olson representing the Spectator, said, "Nothing that Brock told you is inconsistent with Ted saying I did not know there was this special fund set up by Scaife to finance this Arkansas fact work" until allegations about misuse of the funds arose in 1997.
In a letter to Olson released yesterday, the Judiciary Committee's ranking Democrat, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.), said he was "troubled by your responses and lack of responsiveness."
"The credibility of the person appointed to be the Solicitor General is of paramount importance," Leahy said. "When arguing in front of the Supreme Court on behalf of the U.S. Government, the Solicitor General is expected to come forward with both the strengths and weaknesses of the case, to inform the Court of things it might not otherwise know, and to be honest in all his or her dealings with the Court. I expect the same responsiveness and cooperation from the nominees before this committee."
Olson, one of the nation's leading conservative lawyers, said he had tried to respond accurately. "I have attempted to answer them fully, except to the extent that they sought privileged communications with clients, which I am not permitted by law to disclose," he said.
At the White House, press secretary Ari Fleischer defended Olson, saying, "Mr. Olson has assured the committee that he was not involved in that matter in any way."
In an interview with Reuters, Hatch predicted "Olson will go through next week. I talked to him and he said his answers have been accurate."
One of the issues that Leahy raised in his letter involved Olson's representation of David Hale, a former Arkansas judge and businessman who pleaded guilty to fraud charges and became a witness against key Whitewater figures. Henderson, who directed the Arkansas Project, said yesterday he introduced Hale to Olson when Hale came to Washington to find a lawyer who could help him deal with a subpoena from the Senate Whitewater committee, and sat in on a meeting between the two men.
At his hearing April 5, Leahy asked Olson how he came to be Hale's lawyer. "One of his lawyers contacted me -- and I can't recall the man's name -- and asked if I would be available," Olson replied. He did not mention Henderson's role. In his letter to Leahy dated May 9, Olson amended his testimony: "I believe I was contacted by a person or persons whose identities I cannot presently recall . . . regarding whether I might be willing to represent Mr. Hale." Again, he did not mention Henderson.
On the question of Olson's involvement in the Arkansas Project, American Spectator documents show that in the magazine's accounting system, payments of at least $14,341.45 to Olson's law firm, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, were attributed to the project.
Part of that paid for an article that Olson -- writing under a pseudonym -- produced cataloguing federal and Arkansas statutes the Clintons might have violated if unsubstantiated reports of their behavior were proven. The article concluded that Bill Clinton could confront up to 178 years in prison and that Hillary Clinton had a "total potential criminal liability" of 47 years in jail.
Olson has faced previous questions about his congressional testimony. In 1986 an independent counsel was named to investigate whether Olson misled Congress in testimony in 1983, when he was at the Justice Department.
Independent counsel Alexia Morrison concluded that Olson's testimony was "disingenuous and misleading" and "less than forthcoming" but that his statements were "literally true" and could not be criminally prosecuted.
© 2001 The Washington Post Company
washingtonpost.com |
